


Frayed

by catfacekathryn



Series: The Pain of Unrequited Love [1]
Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: CollegeStudent!Yukhei, Desperation, M/M, Red String of Fate, china to korea, cross country travel, fraying thread
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-14
Updated: 2019-08-14
Packaged: 2020-08-23 18:28:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,977
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20247340
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/catfacekathryn/pseuds/catfacekathryn
Summary: Wong Yukhei is just a stressed college student. Sure, he's from a wealthy family, but college is still just as hard for him and he's mostly on his own. With everything already on his plate, the last thing he ever wanted was to see the red string of fate.





	1. Chapter I

College was stressful. Sometimes, being there seemed pointless. It didn't always feel like the things I was learning were important, and I'd wondered why I was even there in the first place. But then I remembered my parents insistence on me coming, so I could get a degree and take over the family company. I'd just be working at the convenience store down the road from my dorm room and it'd just hit me, you're here because your parents told you to be here, so don't disappoint them. And of course, for a while afterwards I'd feel guilty that I'd been thinking it wasn't worth it, I'd get all stressed about my grades and overwork myself with study nights fueled by energy drinks and sugary food. I'd be sick for days, and then I'd get over it and fall back into quiet indifference.

China was a beautiful country, if you had the time to stop and look around you. The nights were what I saw most, the street lights illuminating the city after dusk. And yes, the bright lights blocked out the stars, but the moon was always there, and it was easy to let the city lights stand in the place of the stars they overpowered. 

Though China was beautiful, and though I wanted to stop and look, I didn't have the time to do so very often, since I slept most of the mornings and went straight from evening classes to my job, and then straight to bed after studying for a few hours. I hadn't been very far outside campus in the daytime for longer than I could remember. I knew, of course, somewhere deep inside that I'd only been at college for a few years. It hadn't been so long ago that I was in high school, mostly carefree and enjoying my country in the sunlight. 

But it wasn't easy to think about how lively I was in the past. It wasn't the easiest thing to remember everything I was missing out on because of college. It was much easier to ignore the past. It was much easier to pretend I'd always been here, and that I'd never known anything else. I knew that if I thought about what I couldn't have, I'd mess up the careful balance between indifference and fervent studying more than I already did by wishing I could take a walk in the park for a while. It was much harder to think about the morning birds I slept through than it was to forget I'd ever heard them in the first place.

My friends thought the way I lived was insane. I ate with them at lunch, but I'd never really hung out with them. There were breaks, of course, but I was never close enough to any of my friends to be invited on trips. I usually spent break catching up on sleep and trying to maintain my jacked up sleep schedule for when school would start up again. I took more shifts during breaks, since I didn't have class, and saved up money in the hopes I'd have one less thing to be stressed about once I resumed my classes. And I will admit, it did work for a while. But eventually, inevitably, I always started worrying again as my money ran short. 

My friends were more the casual kind, the ones you made slowly over time spent together in school when there were shared classes. I'd had a few, more genuine, friends in high school, but we'd long ago drifted apart as college began to really overwhelm me. I didn't even know where any of them were at now, or what they were doing. Most of them were probably settling down in cute little houses with their significant others and their 2 dogs and the stray cat that just won't leave. Most of them had probably finished college or dropped out, two options I sometimes found myself torn between.

My college friends didn't understand the way I lived. "Why can't you just get money from your parents," they'd ask. "Why do you have to work so late? If you got money from your parents, you wouldn't have to study so late and sleep through the mornings," they'd say. My parents had said that having a job was part of the experience, and it would teach me both humility and responsibility. The only thing I learned from that job was that I hated convenience stores and the people that frequented them late at night. 

As much as I hated the way I lived in the times I'd actually stop and think about what I was doing, I didn't want anything to change. I was a coward who couldn't tell his parents that I didn't want to live the life they set out for me. I was a coward who was afraid of change, which was why I'd never drop out of college. I hated my routine, but it was comfortable for me in a terrible way. I knew what to expect, and I was prepared for most anything. Not having the time for friends was okay. Not having the time to see things in the sunlight was okay. 

I was okay with going through my college life mostly numb, mostly not really there, mostly considered a boring person. I was pretty sure I was the only student on campus that could truthfully say they'd never once been to a college party. I was the last person who'd ever receive and invite from Jackson. I was seen in college as that giant without a soul, who was more a zombie than a person. And truthfully, I was okay with that. I preferred to be viewed like that over being hit with something I wasn't prepared for. Dealing with new things terrified me to no end. 

So waking up with a thick red string tied attached to my finger scared me so badly I screamed. Because surely this was a prank, right? Surely, there was just no way. This couldn't really be the start of the end for my soulmate, right?


	2. Chapter II

My friends in high school had always talked about soulmates. The other half of your soul, the person you were meant to be with forever. Most people never knew if they were really with their soulmate though. There wasn't much of a way to tell; some people said it was just this feeling upon meeting, and others said the telling sign was the overwhelming strength of the feelings towards the other half in question. I'd always supposed we'd just meet sometime later, once I was in charge of my family's company and I could take care of them without any worries.

My friends in college always talked with each other about the red string of fate, and I'd listen in, because what else did I have to do? They talked about how it was a pretty rare thing in the past, but how it was becoming more common now. In the past, soulmates were apparently born near each other because fate recognized they couldn't travel very far. But as technology improved, and people were able to travel nearly anywhere in the world, soulmates were born farther apart. And it was easier for one or both soulmates to fall in love with the wrong person.

Seeing the red string meant that your soulmate had fallen in love with someone else so deeply that their body was rejecting their feelings for this person they weren't meant to be with. It wasn't just a painless way of rejecting the unnatural love either; it came in the form of flowers and flower petals, of thick stalks and harsh thorns. 

Hanahaki had many symptoms, though not every case was affected by all of them. There was the most obvious one, coughing up petals, which would eventually progress into expelling entire flowers from the lungs. But there were other things. Hoarse voices, dry throats, and shortness of breath. Blood would be coughed up, and if it went far enough, the afflicted would be unable to talk completely until it was healed. There was the paleness of the skin and the fairly rapid weight loss. Weakness in the body, and a never ending pain in the heart and the chest; until they died. 

There was the most significant symptom, which the afflicted never experienced themselves. The last symptom was solely for their soulmate, a cry for help in the form of a taut red string, connecting the two soulmates. And if the other person ignored it, my friends said, that was when the rarest symptom of hanahaki manifested; flowers would grow through their skin and scent the air with their fragrance. It was something that was little more than a death sentence for the afflicted, one they'd never understand as what amounted to rejection by their soulmate. 

My friends always talked about soulmates, and I'd always thought I'd be the first one mine fell in love with. It had never occured to me that maybe, my soulmate wouldn't care to wait for me. I thought I'd only ever be the only one for my soulmate, and they'd only ever be the one for me. Seeing that string on my finger scared me, because it meant they hadn't waited. They'd found someone else, someone who couldn't ever love them.

How long had my soulmate loved someone else? How long had they been coughing up petals? Was this the first day? Or was it just one in a long string of many, one which would be followed by many others?

Those thoughts hardened my heart, and I did what I never thought I'd do; I ignored my soulmate in a fit of spite and hurt. Because at the time I thought, if they love someone else, why not just let them suffer through what they brought upon themselves?

I was terrible and I was terribly jealous, jealous of my soulmate who had time for love and jealous of the one my soulmate loved, for getting the attention I couldn't have. The attention I'd likely never receive unless I went to my soulmate myself; and I was too angry to do that right now. 

I continued on with my life, boring and stressful as it was, only now I blatantly ignored the cry for help attached to my finger. Over the next nine months, as I worked towards finishing my degree, I ignored the greying thread. Because at the time, doing what my parents wanted me to do was more important than someone who loved another person. My degree was more important than the other half of me, my other half who was probably in more pain than I could imagine right now. 

But then, something else happened overnight, something that scared me so badly I screamed. It was something my friends had never talked about, and that scared me more than the string appearing, because at least I'd known what the string meant. 

I didn't know what it meant when one of the threads on the now-grey string was snapped when I woke up.


	3. Chapter III

When I opened the search engine, the first thing it did was suggest recent news to me. There were political things that I ignored, and pop culture things I scanned briefly. One thing caught my attention slightly longer than the rest. 

Korean boy group DREAM has just released their music video for 'Supernova', and it's out of this world!

It was a few days old, and I ended up shrugging it off and clicking the search bar, hesitating just a moment as I bit my lip before I typed in my search. 

what does it mean if the red string turns grey and starts to fray

Before my answers came up, I felt an ache in my heart for just a moment. I looked at my hand, moved my eyes to my finger and the string attached to it, and I saw that another thread had snapped. And then I looked back at my phone, and I felt my eyes tearing up. I clicked into the first link and read through what was written.

It was one of those ask/answer platforms, where people could leave a question in the hopes someone else would answer it. Someone else had left a question that was along the lines of why does my heart hurt when this grey string on my finger breaks? There was only one helpful answer under the question.

oh, dealt with this myself. the string is connecting u to ur soulmate. they've got hanahaki and they're going to die if u ignore that. i ignore it cus i didn;t know any better, and then 1 day i woke up and it felt like my heart was shattering. it took me way to long to realize that it meant my soulmate had died :(

That morning, I packed two changes of clothes in my backpack along with as much food as I could cram into it. I'd emptied everything out of the bag before hand, and I shoved my wallet into my pocket once the bag was chock-full of mostly food. I grabbed the keys to my car and drove away without a word to anyone. I didn't have any close friends anyways, so what did it matter?

I drove as fast as I could, following the string onto back roads and through small towns I'd never even heard about. When the road I was driving on emptied out into a parking lot, I stopped the car and put it in park, shutting it off and getting out of the car. I could hear the ocean far below as I walked to the edge of the clifftop lot. The quickly fraying string extended out over the water, heading towards what I was pretty sure was Korea. I let out a groan of frustration and got back in my car, spinning out of the parking lot quickly.

I drove along the coastal roads, only stopping to buy energy drinks and shave my face; I hated the way facial hair felt against my skin, and I wouldn't have bothered with the act if I could have ignored it. I took the first turn into Korea I could, nearly missing it in the darkness of night. I drove and drove, and I didn't stop. I was going too fast, and I was surprised I hadn't been stopped by police yet. Anyone who saw me would think I was batshit crazy. My hair had grown out to my jawline, as it'd already been too long when I left college. It was constantly in my face, and it was tangled from the wind and desperately needed to be washed. I was running solely on caffeine, sugar, and desperation, and I was sure I looked at least a little deranged. 

When I drove into Seoul, I had no idea where I was going. I couldn't even read that city limit sign, and I only knew the name of this city because it was the capital and I'd learned about it in high school. The streets were confusing, and I was sure I ran at least three lights simply because I was more focused on the string than I was the road. It was a miracle I didn't kill anyone with the way I was driving. But I wouldn't have cared either way, because the string was down to four thin, silver-grey threads. I almost didn't realize that the thread had finally lead me to an apartment complex until I stomped on the breaks.

My car screeched to a stop and I opened the door frantically, my fingers clumsy with emotion. My eyes were on the four threads. I let out a choked sob as I watched it snap into three, and I spilled out of my car. I scraped up my hands and forearms, but I untangled myself from my car as quickly as I could. I left it idling in the street and threw open the door to the apartment building. I ran up the stairs, not even registering the elevator as an option because that required me standing still while my soulmate was suffering in here somewhere. 

When the string finally leveled out, I nearly tripped over my own feet at the unexpected change of direction. I chased after it, coming to a stop in front of a closed door. *Apartment N127*. My soulmate was in there. I immediately tried to open the door, but it was locked. So, I did what I thought to be logical. I kicked the door open and ran in, stopped by the six guys screaming in front of a tv. 

"Where is he," I yelled at them. It didn't even occur to me that I only spoke Chinese fluently, and though I was in Korea, my Korean wasn't good, and these people probably didn't understand me. They gave me puzzled looks, two of the six looking slightly concerned, and I decided to ignore them and do what I'd been doing the entire trip here; I followed the string. 

It lead me to another closed door, which turned out to be a bathroom. There was a boy around my age, maybe a little younger, kneeling in front of the toilet when I opened the unlocked door. He was coughing, red and white carnations, and as his wide eyes moved to look at me, I saw little yellow flowers lining the top part of his ears. He was so pale, and thin, and his lips were stained with blood. There was still a petal stuck to his lips. I burst into tears at the sight and fell to my knees beside him, wrapping the frail boy up in a tight hug. 

"I'm so sorry. I shouldn't have ignored you like that."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guys omg I didn't expect so many people to read this overnight!! Thanks so much for the kudos, I hope you enjoyed it!!


End file.
